Arrow-Leafed balsam root (smúkwaʔxn) has her private moments. Here, she is bringing a crop of suns out of the earth. Smúkwaʔxn has her public moments, too. The suns are mature a couple days […]
The Many Faces of Smúkwaʔxn, or The Birth of the Sun
Sagebrush Shares Her Water and Builds a World
Have a look at this sage brush: Like all plants, she gathers most of her water from the top surface of the soil, where it is most quickly lost to the dry […]
Butterfly Season is Here
The spring is advancing three or four days for every day, after its slow start. Now the butterflies! I first wrote that I couldn’t identify this pretty one. “It looks like a […]
Helping the Bees
Here is the local crowd in the pussy willow down the road at 2 pm yesterday. Bees, wild and domestic. Big honey bees, small solitary bees, and even a fly or two. […]
Climate, Wild Harvest and Human Life as Environments
More important as a food crop than the pretty yellow bell lily … …is desert parsley. She’s cream-coloured… … with short flower stalks, or tall ones… … or purple, when still half-closed… […]
Yellow Bells Arrive
Once an important food crop, yellow bells are now rare, yet continue to mark the exchange of water and heat in the soil and to mark what is still possible for renewal […]
The First Petal of the First Blossom of the Sun
It’s a good day for arrow-leafed balsam roots. They have come fast (in two days). If you hurry, there’s still time for some fine steamed sprouts. Their menthol flavour is not yet […]
The Glory That is Paul Terbasket’s Apricot Tree
In 1915, Paul Terbasket of the Lower Similkameen Indian Band was jailed for disobeying a foolish court order and watering his orchard. One apricot tree remains. His land is leased out to […]
Rising With the Trees
On the grasslands of the Similkameen, where the mountains are the sky, one forgets, at times, to pay attention to distance, but here is a reminder. Notice the remnants of a lakebed […]
Waiting for the Fire in Lake Country
So, here’s the deer, porcupine, snake and coyote trail going up the hill. The bear likes to stay down in the gully to the left. That’s a siya? bush, fruitful with berries […]
Okanagan Okanogan 